Interior Chief Hodel Urges Oil Drilling In Wildlife Area

February 12, 1987|By John N. Maclean, Chicago Tribune.

WASHINGTON — Interior Secretary Donald Hodel, warning of new gasoline shortages, urged development of potential U.S. oil resources in areas controlled by the Interior Department off the coast of California and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska.

Hodel also blasted the Canadian government for championing the position that the Arctic refuge be made a wilderness area and thus off-limits to oil drilling. He said the Canadian position was ``an easy, pro-environmental position for them to take`` and one that, if successful, would help them sell energy to the U.S.

He said he found the Canadian position ``astonishing . . . after the drilling they have done offshore and onshore in the Arctic.`` Interior Department officials said the Canadians have drilled two oil wells in the breeding grounds of a caribou herd that migrates to the Arctic refuge and have done other drilling in the Beaufort Sea, all without consulting the U.S.

Hodel called the Canadian complaints ``hardly credible`` and

``doublespeak.``

On the general issue of oil, Hodel said, ``We are headed toward a period of time when people will be sitting in gas lines, in the next two to five years.`` Hodel, who was secretary of the Energy Department before moving to the Interior Department, made his remarks at a breakfast meeting with reporters.

Hodel said he had accurately predicted to ``within a week`` the rise in oil prices from their lows of $9 to $12 a barrel to the current selling price of about $18 a barrel.

A new gasoline crisis could begin at any time, he said, if there were ``an upset of a hostile nature`` in the Middle East similar to the American bombing raid on Libya last April. He said he expects the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to realize in a short time that it is ``back in the driver`s seat`` in controlling the oil market internationally and to begin running up the price of oil again.

Then he expects the U.S. to intervene in some fashion to control prices, which will skew the oil market and cause a major gasoline shortage, he predicted.

But if the U.S. were to move quickly to develop new oil resources, he said, it would have a ``dampening effect`` on the pricing policies of the cartel. Hodel acknowledged the weapon would be ``as much psychological`` as real, because it would take at least a decade to begin producing oil from new sources.

Hodel plays a key role in the decision-making about the highly controversial drilling proposals for California and Alaska. On Feb. 2, he recommended to Congress the leasing of 13 percent of federal offshore holdings that previously had been under a congressional moratorium.

By March or April, he is expected to make a recommendation to Congress concerning the Arctic refuge. Congress is considering a bill to declare the refuge a wilderness area.

The Interior Department last November released a draft report calling the 1.5 million-acre coastal plain the most significant potential oil field left in North America.

At the meeting with reporters, Hodel said he had made no decision concerning the Arctic refuge, but he did say the U.S. should be ``preparing to develop those (oil) resources we have.``